During an
interview for an MTV special, rapper Kanye West launched
into a discussion about hip-hop and homosexuality,
saying that homophobia in the genre must stop.

By

August 19 2005 12:00 AM EDT

Kanye West says
"gay" has become an antonym to hip-hop and that it
needs to be stopped. During an interview for an MTV special,
the 27-year-old rapper launched into a discussion
about hip-hop and homosexuality while talking about
"Hey Mama," a song on his upcoming album, Late
Registration. West says that when he was young,
people would call him a "mama's boy." "And what
happened was, it made me kind of homophobic, because I
would go back and question myself," West says on the show,All Eyes on Kanye West, set to air Thursday night
(10:30 p.m. Eastern).

West says he
changed his ways, though, when he learned one of his cousins
was gay. "It was kind of like a turning point when I was
like, 'Yo, this is my cousin. I love him, and I've
been discriminating against gays.'" West says hip-hop
was always about "speaking your mind and about
breaking down barriers, but everyone in hip-hop
discriminates against gay people." He adds that in
slang, gay is "the opposite, the exact opposite
word of hip-hop." Kanye's message: "Not just hip-hop
but America discriminates. And I want to come on TV
and tell my rappers, tell my friends, 'Yo, stop it.'"

West, whose debut
disc, The College Dropout, won a Grammy for
best rap album, will see his second record in stores on
August 30. (AP)